This is where the healing begins...

The final good-byes were said last week as really good, close friends and my homeschooling mom/partner-in-crime left for their new home 2,000 miles away.  Coincidentally (or not), our church is studying Habakkuk this month in which a guy asks God a lot of questions and God gives him answers that he doesn't like because it doesn't fit in with his idea of a good plan, even though he acknowledges that God can only make good plans so this plan that seems to be wrong must be right.

I totally empathize with Habakkuk.  When we first moved to Arizona, I felt cast adrift from a strong base of friends.  I would vacillate between wanting to curl up into a fetal position and ignore the world to manically trying to set up play-date after play-date in hopes of finding my new best friend for myself and my kids.  Looking back, I might have resembled this:



A year after our move, I found a homeschooling family that had moved 2,000 miles away to a house very close to us.  Knowing what I had gone through, I contacted her and we set up a playdate.  The kids got along fine and before you know it, we were planning a two-family homeschool co-op and put together a small P.E. co-op close to us.  One of her sons and one of mine shared a passion for baseball and we took turns with baseball carpools.  One of my daughters and her other son shared a love of making art, so we put them in an advanced art class together with a teacher that she had really liked.  We still use the teacher.  About the same time another homeschooling mom and I were talking about friendships and she talked about the "cult of friendship", in which "friendships" become a status symbol with the hierarchy based on  how many FB friends you have, how many birthday parties you get invited to, etc.  Through that conversation, God pointed out that I was buying into the cult of friendship myth and addressed some issues from my own public school experiences, in which I felt like a deer with a target-shaped birthmark over my heart.

So I became content with the friends He had divinely appointed to me, including the one close friendship that was blooming between that family and ours.  I figure that we spent, roughly two months a year with them when you add extra playdates, weekly co-op get-togethers, birthdays and even a camping trip.  

So why would God encourage me to focus my time on developing a close relationship with a family that He was intending to move so far away in such a short time?  Did I misunderstand Him?  Had this family become an idol in my life and God had to remove them to demonstrate it to me?  Is this a little more perverse form of His occasionally gently-twisted humor?  The last two weeks, especially have been  a struggle and, honestly, I started checking out again, wanting to curl back up in a fetal position and insulate myself from the world.  Today, in quiet time, God replied to me, "My dear child, you and Tina have chosen the most excellent way--the way of love, focusing on people rather than accomplishments and activities.  It hurts right now, but I will carry you through the pain of loss.  Just let go of striving and fall back into my arms."

And so, I find yet another reason to have joy in this hard moment:  that God has been pleased and is faithful to be the God of all comfort, the God who provides, and the God who is in control.

Though the fig tree should not blossom

And there be no fruit on the vines,
Though the yield of the olive should fail
And the fields produce no food,
Though the flock should be cut off from the fold
And there be no cattle in the stalls,
¹⁸ Yet I will exult in the Lord,
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
¹⁹ 

Habakkuk 3:17-18

"Different Like Me"

People are people.  That is one message that God has been drilling into me over the past two years.  We try to throw up walls like cultural differences, different tastes in music, food, art, politics and religion.  But if you sit down for a REAL conversation, where you REALLY listen, you find someone just like yourself, with worries, hopes, disappointments and victories.  And I love listening to stories and seeing the similarities.

I guess God has been showing that to my kids, too.  He started when He had us take in a gentleman from our church who was down on his luck.  He had some health issues, he looked funny, he talked funny, and he would never be considered as a contestant on Jeopardy.  It took our kids a little bit to get used to him.  At the end of the time, my oldest daughter commented that she was glad he had stayed with us because she realized that people who look different aren't really all that different.  Score one for God.

Last week, we took half a day to take advantage of discount tickets at a mall-based aquarium with a few other families.  One of the families has a son with Down's Syndrome.  Last year, she and her husband had decided that public school would be a better option for him and had such a horrible experience with the public school, they pulled him out again.  I had met him once and would consider him relatively high functioning.  His speech is affected a little, but in the short class we all had signed up to take, he kept himself fairly quiet and unobtrusive with just a little bit of help from a friend and his mother.  My oldest daughter had a blast with him after the class and she treated him as she would any other child.  As we were getting ready to leave, the boys mother pulled me aside and told me she had to talk to me.  She told me that she was thanking my daughter for how kindly she treated her son and my daughter's response was something like, "I like him because he is different, just like me."  It had blown her away, and me, too, with gratitude for her perspective.

For those of you who have never met her, she doesn't have Down's Syndrome or any other handicap.  No one would notice her passing her in the street.  Unless she was mugging with one of her overdramatic expressions.  Or using her Smeagol voice.  Or trying out one of her  new voices, which sounds like a squeaky door.  Or talking Gandalf style, which inevitably involves the phrase "You!  Shall!  Not!  Pass!!!!"  That is how she is different and she recognizes that she is different.   So all she sees in this little boy with Down's Syndrome is a boy who is different like her from "the crowd"  but not in the same way as she is different.  And she revels in those differences.  This was one of my earliest goals in homeschooling, to let them be who God made them to be without feeling as if they were weird or stupid, which is the social lessons a lot of kids receive in public schools.  And God is gracious to answer my prayers at least for one child that He has helped me train.  I pray that this quality has been ingrained in her so deeply that the world and its influence will never drive it out and that she will know that people are people, created in God's image and loved by Him more than they can imagine.

Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  Colossians 3:11-13

One of my heros

I have recently "officially" added a new blog that I am following to my list, called "Blessed to Be a Blessing". The woman who writes it is one of those unspoken heroines who quietly do amazing things. She is a homeschooling mom with whom I have become friends. She and her family are trying to help a government run orphanage in Ethiopia. She has "adopted" two of the boys there and has visited twice in the last year. The last time she visited, she managed to raise money in one or two days to buy 100 pairs of shoes, socks and underwear for the boys. That story is dividing into five parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. It is totally amazing and one of many stories which point to the fact that governments can't really help people. Only people can help people.

Currently, she is trying to raise money to get new pillowcases and blankets for roughly 300 boys living there. Her whole family will be traveling with her to go to Ethiopia in a few months. They have been in regular contact with their boys through the magic of Skype.

My next blog, which may not happen for a while, will be all about the wonderful time we had during "Relative Month".

God Bless!

Second Summit Achieved: North Mountain

The kids and I packed our camelbacks and snacks for our second hike to a summit around Phoenix: North Mountain. I discovered while hiking that Shadow Mountain, Lookout Mountain, North Moutain and Shaw Butte are all pretty close together. This time, we invited two other families to join us.

One family I met a year ago the Veritas homeschool group when they moved to Arizona from South Carolina. We actually live no more than ten minutes away from each other, walking at a six year-old's pace. She has three kids roughly the same ages as John, Kyle and Jessi. We have been getting together since August for a little group P.E. in a nearby park. Kyle and her middle boy are fast friends and are playing baseball together on the same team. Elizabeth has found a kindred artistic spirit in her oldest son, who is Jessi's age and Jessi and her young daughter like to play together and Jessi gets her Barbie fix at their house.

The other family I met through two different families. She emailed me in the winter with a list of prayer requests for a family we know whose wife was going through breast cancer surgery. I knew the woman, a busy mommy through a Bible study that we had attended and she had a Boy Scout connection. A week later, I actually met her when I helped a mom in my homeschooling group run a garage sale to help her raise funds to go to Africa to see the sons that she "adopted" living in an Ethiopian-run orphanage. Since then, I started to consistently run into her in our church and she decided to join the homeschooling group. Isn't it funny how God throws people together?

The hike started out cool and cloudy with a bit of a wind. Since the beginning of April, temperatures had taken a twenty degree dip, which was actually welcoming. However, a couple of my kids complained about being cold in their short sleeved shirts (don't laugh, you Minnesotans and Chicagoans! Don't cry either.) However, the sun soon burst out from behind the clouds and those wearing coats soon gave them to their moms because they became too hot. The start of the trail was steep but wide and soon turned into an aging road that led almost to the summit. The summit is actually being used for micro-wave extenders and cell phone towers. The trail seemed to end there, though a small, round, sun faded sign indicated another trail that looked more like a foot trail than a groomed trail. However, it took us down, winding around boulders, making us sit down sometimes to get to the next ledge (for those of us with short legs or weak knees). Most of it was rocky, though there were a few times when it became those little small pebbles that can easily cause you to land on your derrier. There were at least a few times when I wondered if I lost a marble or two to let my kids scramble down the steep path with a drop off so close that would lead to certain damage if they slipped off it. Plus, I had heard from a mom at our P.E. class that this is the time when hibernating snakes, grumpy and starving, come out of hiding for the first time all winter. However, the kids kept their footing and we didn't see any snakes, at least on that hike. The only potential problem came when one child, terrified of bees, encountered bees flying too close to the path. The kids all seemed to hit it off and the moms who didn't know each other got to know each other better. A fun time was had by all. I hope you enjoy the "movie" I put together.